


the heart hides unimaginable things

by softshark



Series: parent and child fics [3]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 10:20:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17723327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softshark/pseuds/softshark
Summary: The first conversation between Elwing and Elrond of Rivendell west of the sea."... and i can feel your anger from way across the sea, oh the heart it hides such unimaginable things."





	the heart hides unimaginable things

**Author's Note:**

> another one inspired by and written for daywillcomeagain on tumblr! they asked for awkwardness between elrond and elwing in their first meeting in valinor.... this is 'awkwardness' if you squint. but mostly it's just angst. forgive me! the title of this fic comes from the song "sky full of song" by florence fëanorion herself.

Elwing’s shawl was wrapped tightly around herself, standing at the base of her tower on Eldamar, the seabirds having alerted her to her son’s coming. She wondered now if not going to see him upon his arrival had been a mistake. She had decided to let him come to her- for she did not know how her son felt about her, and she felt that letting him decide whether he wanted to meet her was better.  
The truth is, she’s not sure if she herself even wanted to meet him. It had been 6,000 years, and long had she felt she had surrendered the right to motherhood, unsure what their relationship would even look like, now. What she would even want it to be.  
She did not have many visitors in her little tower- which is how she liked it. The trauma and turmoil of her early life leant itself to reclusion for many centuries; healing and finally taking the time to gather her sense of identity and the security and worth in her own existence; and by the time she felt that she had managed to obtain that security, she had become so accustomed to solitude, she felt very little desire to welcome anything besides it.

She had thought, maybe, that the return of her own mother, who, like her son, she too had never known, would prepare her to play the flip role, whenever he would come, but she was naïve in thinking that.  
Her mother at her own birth had been far more aged than she had been when she gave birth to her sons, and far more prepared to be a mother than she, whatsmore…. They two had been ripped apart by the world around them, not driven asunder by their own choices.  
If anything, Nimloth’s return made Elwing feel less prepared, for as she was grasped in her mother’s arms after many millennia apart, Elwing had realized how young and lost she still felt.  
Elwing shuddered, from the chill of the wind off the rocky quay, she told herself, as a figure appeared over the horizon. Unconsciously, she took a step backwards towards her door, unconsciously drifting nearer to the haven of her tower.  
She studied from afar her son’s face and disposition, for she had heard much about him, the few kin she had who visited her regularly had brought her tidings of what those returned from Mandos and the hither shores themselves had to say about her son.

He was beloved by all, respected and revered. Not through power or war, but countless years of kindness and compassion. ‘The last homely house East of the Sea’ they called their son's halls in Imladris- it was hidden in a great valley like the kingdom of her husband’s grandfather, and protected by a great magic like her grandfather’s kingdom… But the great difference was that his halls were not a kingdom, and he was not a king, and moreover, he offered peace and shelter to all whom might need it.  
She was told that her son had grown into a scion of great wisdom and kindness, beloved by all.  
So why, then, did Elwing feel fear of her own son?  
It was a fear beyond the mere apprehension she felt at how their reunion might turn out, it was a fear of the elf himself.

For Elwing knew that her son had been raised by the Fëanorion butchers that had twice slaughtered her people, knew that the demon-in-elf-form they called Maglor had taken her sons and formed some kind of pervasion of parental attachment towards them, using them to make some vulgar attempt at kindling love within the darkness of his heart, again - it was akin to if her children had been raised by orcs, for that is how she saw the Fëanorions.  
Was Maedhros the Tall not broken in the pits of Angband and reforged into something just as any orc? And did his brothers not follow him in their own darkness?  
And though in her heart Elwing often always told herself that her sons were prisoners, that comfort had long been diminished by rumors that great love was born between them and the Fëanorions, that they even called Celebrimbor of Eregion ‘cousin’: a title far too familiar for kin related so distantly through blood alone.  
She feared, perhaps, her sons had been reforged. As Sauron had reforged Maedhros in his own image, and Maedhros had reforged his brothers just the same, perhaps her sons, too…..

Any last hope she had that these were only rumors had been quashed by the return of Gil-galad from Mandos- from his own lips he delivered the blow.  
_‘It is true, my lady. Elrond and Elros in his life loved Maedhros and Maglor, dearly. Maglor lives with Elrond, still….’_  
Gil-galad told her it was not his place to discuss the nuance of their relationship with her, and counseled only that she withhold her judgement, and quash any fear it might stir in her.

Her son was closing the final gap between them, his bearing reminiscent of that of an old man’s, she thought. Hands clasped behind his back and ambling his way towards her thoughtfully- she almost smiled.  
But she could not reconcile all she had heard of her son and his kindness and wisdom with an Elf who loved one of those creatures of darkness as a parent. And in the final seconds before he reached her, a cold fear she had not felt in thousands of years washed over her.  
“ _Mae govannen_ , Mother.” He said, softly, as he drew up in front of her.  
She tightened her shawl, imperceptibly, she had believed, but she saw his eyes flick towards the movement.  
She nodded, murmuring softly in return, “A star shines upon the hour of our meeting.” She had been told this was a customary greeting in the tongue of the Elves of the later ages of the world.  
Elrond’s eyes drifted towards the sky, her own following behind them. There in the sky, her husband shined, and a sense of peace and comfort fell over her heart.  
“Indeed,” Elrond mused, placidly.  
She turned back to him, “W-would you like to come in?”  
“Is that what you would like?” His tone was kind, but it seemed to cut her to her core, as if he knew her more deeply than he should, and she realized that, in truth, she was not ready for him to breach the inner sanctity of her safe place. She tipped her head in acknowledgement, and he tipped his in return.

“Mother… I do not wish to force myself upon you, in fact I have no intention to. I know that our relationship will never be straightforward, and, though I do wish to know you and to share a relationship with you… I understand if that cannot be. I bear you know ill will, nor resentment, nor will I ever close my door to you, should you ever desire to know me.”

She felt something akin to frustration bloom in her heart then, and she snipped, “Should it not be me saying this? Am I not the mother and you the child? Am I not your elder?”  
Elrond’s lip quirked in a smile, “Mother… You are 29 years older than me. Surely, we have both reached an age of which we can acknowledge how infinitesimal that breadth of time is…. And, alas, I have also found that age, for the Eldar, is measured not in count of years but in the weathering of the tumults of the world; which I must say makes me far older than you.” The smile slid from his face then, “What’s more… I am not the one who fled from you.” His words were soft, but again, she felt that they stabbed.

She had been expecting them, but still she was not prepared. Her heart turned to stone and tears began to slide down her face- he made a jerking movement to touch her in comfort but reconsidered whether his touch would upset her even more.  
“Mother, please understand, that is not an accusation, nor was it meant to wound in anyway, it was merely an observation.”  
“I was trying to draw them away!” She gasped, miserably, but even as she herself knew the words were not entirely true, she could see in his eyes that he knew as well. Indeed, she had fled the camp that night hoping that she might draw the wrath of the Fëanorions away from her people, but that had not been the force that had truly driven her, not the reason she was running as if the wolves of Sauron themselves were at her heels.

She had been fleeing from the world, from pain and sorrow and blood shed- she was running to the sea, carrying the gem that was as an embodiment of all her burdens and grief; she was running for oblivion, and release.

In the eyes of her son, that seemed to know this truth, she saw pity. And It angered her.  
“Do not look at me in pity!!” She shouted, pulling away from him, tears still streaming down her face. “If you believe that I am a mother who abandoned her children, then why do you pity me?! If you do not believe my words then I would have resentment in your eyes, but not pity.”

“I do not believe you are a mother who abandoned her children, I believe you are a soul who bore a great burden of anguish for one so young, I believe that the monsters that stole your family from you were bearing down upon your doors once more, and you did what any justly terrified creature carrying a great grief would do in such a situation- you ran. I can bear you no resentment for that.”

“’Monsters’….” She murmured, then raised her voice, “Monsters you name them, but I have been told you have harbored one for all the millennia of your life, am I to believe that what I have been told was untrue?”  
Elrond straightened himself, taking in a breath of consideration, “Monsters I do name them, nor would I have you disbelieve what you have been told, for I indeed have lived these long years with one by my side; for though I name him monster, I also name him father.”

A sob wrenched itself from Elwing’s chest, “How?! How can that be?! How can you know what he is but still love him-“ _Do not call me mother if you would also call him father, ran through her mind_ , “-How is it that you pity me, and care for me, if you belong to him?!”

Elrond looked at her sadly, “Long ago, I made two choices, these two choices I shared with my brother, and these two choices would shape and define the rest of our lives. In the first, we chose differently. My twin made the choice to be counted among the Atani- he lived his short life and moved on where I cannot go.” Elwing heard in her son’s voice and saw in his eyes an old hurt, barely suppressed, and still a source of ache even now the wound had healed over. And in her own heart, Elwing felt the pain for a son she would never know. “And I,” Elrond continued, “Chose to be counted among the Eldar, bound forever to this earth.

“But In the second choice… We chose the same. Elros and I were born and raised in a world drenched in blood and consumed by darkness. When the Valar fell upon Thangorodrim in their might and terror, and overthrew it, it was a promise of a new day, a new age: one of peace and light…. Elros and I chose to forge the paths of our lives in forgiveness, pity and love. For even if those paths ran parallel and not together, even if they diverged, the paths would be the same; and the darkness that consumed the world that we knew would never again grow in our hearts.”

Elwing raised a shaking hand to her mouth, but her son’s own hand reached out, then, to take it gently in his own, running his thumb gently over her knuckles.

“I will not speak of my relationship with him to you, for I believe I may hold both of you in my hearts without one contradicting the other…. But I also believe that if anyone is entitled to an explanation about the bond between he and myself, it is you, but, mother,” she looked up at him, and was startled to find sadness and pleading in his eyes, his drooping ears and slack mouth betraying a vulnerability he had not yet shown, “To spill that part of my history and my feelings for him, to bare the part of myself that came from him, belongs to him, and will always be a part of me…… Spilling those things only to have you reject me for it…. That would wound me far more deeply than you could ever know.  
“Maglor Fëanorion is the most complicated part of me, but also one of the most precious. Please do not ask me to expose it to you only for you to…” He trailed off, but she understood. “I would do it, gladly, and if I do, I will never expect you to ever reconcile with him, or even acknowledge his existence; but you are my mother, and I could not bear rejection of the deepest part of me from you.”

They stood in silence for many moments, and in that time, Elwing came to a decision: a decision to cast aside darkness and fear just as her sons had. Had she not always been safe, here, in this land of light? Gently, she took her son’s other hand, reverently, so that her left hand lay nestled in his, and his other hand was nestled in her right, and said, “There are many parts of you, aren’t there, my son? Many facets that should not be able to join together in to a whole.”

“How can there not be?” He murmured in return, “Am I not the final confluence of all those who stood against the darkness in the first age when Beleriand still sat above the sea?” He let out a shaky laugh. “Nay, I suppose… I have no dwarf blood in me.”  
She smiled, kissing his knuckles gently. “I would like to know all those parts of you. For it was through my body that all those parts came to be… Or the majority of them, at least. I would like to understand them, as well as all the other things that became a part of you since I bore you.” She looked in to his eyes, which now glowed with hope, and felt her own eyes shining. “And I…. would have you know, better, the part of you that came directly from me.”  
Tears began to drip from his eyes, and his voice then came out hoarse, “I would like that…. Long has the parentage of my blood been a great mystery to me.”  
“We shall be a mystery to each other, no more.” She murmured, standing on her toes, and kissing her child’s brow, once more.

**Author's Note:**

> i know it's somewhat controversial, but i've personally always believed that, in some capacity, elrond and maglor maintained a relationship through all the ages of the world, and maglor would eventually sale west with galadriel and elrond. i've noticed this theory/belief is growing more popular though, which makes me happy!


End file.
